


Love is a Magic All its Own

by bookwyrmling



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Gen, Kitchen Witch!Bitty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 15:45:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9079195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwyrmling/pseuds/bookwyrmling
Summary: Sometimes, when you put all your love into your baking, those completed treats can move -- into your neighbor’s kitchen through an open window or out on the table when you’re not looking or tucked away in ladies’ purses or kids’ pockets without anybody any the wiser.It does, admittedly, make keeping track of them a little difficult.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Ngozi is amazing for giving us Check, Please! I'm just happy to play around in it.
> 
> And, hey, when you have your character actually talking to his baked goods, you might as well give him a more fantastic reason for it, right?
> 
> Please come scream with me about these hockey players on Tumblr, where I go by rushingsnowy.

The first time it happens, nobody even knows.

“Dicky!”

“Mama?” a small toddler replies from his mat on the floor as he pushes a car around the printed road.

“Dicky, did you touch the cookies we baked?”

“No.”

“Did you touch the plate the cookies were on?”

“No.”

“Well, all the cookies we made are gone and cookies don’t just up and walk on their lonesome, so do you know where they went?”

Dicky turns surprised eyes up at his mother before standing up and running into the kitchen, tugging himself up by the counter and trying to see over the lip to where he and his mother had left a tray of gingerbread men all decorated. They are supposed to go to church in the morning so everyone could eat them, but now they are gone and Dicky cries.

“We put all our love into the cookies so people will be happy when they eat them,” his mother had told him—repeating the same phrase MooMaw always said about her crumbles—and now he wouldn’t be able to make people happy.

“What’s happening now?” Dicky’s daddy is asking as he walks into the kitchen with a cookie in his hands.

“Richard, where did you get that cookie?” Dicky’s mama asks and Dicky’s daddy holds the bottom half of the gingerbread cookie up in confusion before pointing back towards the living room where his mama runs off to only to return with the tray.

“Why would I have put them out there?” she asks herself as she sets it back down on the kitchen counter and pulls out tupperware to put the rest away for tomorrow, “I just can’t figure it out for the life of me.”

\------

Dicky is six when MooMaw lets him make his first pie all on his own. She watches him the whole time and points out when the crust is uneven, but Dicky got a child-safe knife for his birthday so he gets to cut the crust and MooMaw lets him stand on a chair to stir the blueberry pie filling on the stove. She even lets him put it in the oven, though she is the one who takes it out after Dicky sat on the kitchen floor right watching through the window for the whole hour it is in the oven.

“I put all my love in it,” Dicky says with pride when his MooMaw puts the pie on the windowsill to cool and says it smells like the best pie ever.

His mama and Coach come by that evening for dinner before taking Dicky home and Dicky spends the meal telling his mama about the pie he made all by himself.

“It sounds amazing, Dicky! I can’t wait to try it. I’ll bet that’s exactly what I smelled when we drove up and I told your daddy it made me so hungry just smelling it,” his mama crows with a smile and Dicky kicks his feet and grins, his tongue poking out of two spaces where teeth are missing.

MooMaw steps away then with to prepare dinner while Mama and Coach clear the table and give Dicky a damp cloth to wipe the top of the table with.

“Suzanne!”

“Comin’ Mama!” Dicky’s Mama calls out as she slips into the kitchen with a stack of empty plates she sets near the sink.

“Need help with servi—?” Dicky’s mama asks as she walks over only to cut off when she finds six slices of blueberry pie already served on dessert plates. “A few too many plates, don’t you think?” she asks next and MooMaw only purses her lips.

“This was Dicky’s pie,” MooMaw says, “I was gonna let him take it home and show it off to ya. There’s apricot cobbler on the stovetop for tonight.”

With a glance, Dicky’s mama does, indeed, see a cobbler sitting on the stove.

“But then why serve the pie?”

“I didn’t serve the pie’s the problem,” MooMaw cuts in with her hands on her hips.

“Well, Richard and I didn’t,” Dicky’s mama points out, “and neither did Dicky.”

“It’s not just that,” MooMaw adds, “They’re the perfect eatin’ temperature, even though they’ve been coolin’ for hours.”

“Well that sounds a little impossible, Mama. Are you tryin’ to say the pie served itself?”

“What I’m tryin’ to say, Suzy, is has anything odd happened with the desserts Dicky’s made or helped with before?”

Dicky’s mama pauses and furrows her brow at the question, not understanding where the topic is going before shaking her head, “I don’t think so? Nothing more than them disappearing fast as a dog’ll lick a dish.”

“And they don’t just go missing?” MooMaw presses.

“Mama, I have no idea what you’re trying to say. Desserts don’t just go missing. They gotta go somewhere.”

“Oh, they definitely do,” MooMaw argues, “To your neighbor’s kitchen through an open window or out on the table when you’re not looking or tucked away in ladies’ purses or kids’ pockets they go without anybody the wiser.”

“What? Mama, I don’t get what you’re trying—”

“Your Gammy was the same way, Suzy. Said she put so much of her love in her food it just couldn’t wait to be eaten and would plate itself when nobody was looking if she didn’t tell it what-for. Our Dicky’s got magic, and if we don’t start teachin’ him otherwise, people are gonna start noticin’.”

Dicky’s mama sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly before nodding and picking up a few plates of the perfectly warmed pie. “Dicky, the pie just smelled so good I had to have it tonight, I hope you don’t mind,” she says once she steps back into the dining room with a wide smile while she and MooMaw serve dessert.

\------

“I told y’all to stay calm down there; no shufflin’, ya hear?” Dicky hissed at the coolers beneath the table before giving the loudest a soft kick and staring it into stillness.

“You doing alright over here, Dicky?”

“Just fine, Mother,” an eleven year-old Dicky replied from his booth as he plated up some of his mini pies for the judges he could see two booths down, “Think I was a bit too excited about the competition, though. I can barely keep ‘em all quiet—let alone still.”

“Well, it’s not that much a surprise,” his mother rolls her eyes and smiles, “We both know you’re definitely getting the blue ribbon this year.”

“It’s not decided yet, Mother,” Dicky shrugs and turns his attention back to his pies, but he grins and blushes in pleasure all the same as the three judges walk up to his stall.

“Suzanne, Dicky, it’s so good to see you here again this year.”

“Elaine, you know Dicky well enough to know better than to think otherwise. He’s been near vibrating out his shoes this whole past week,” Dicky’s mother laughs and chats with the three as Dicky plates them the mini pies that call out to him the most. Over the years, he has learned better than to ignore the ones who call his attention the most when it came time to serve someone. Not only does the person who eats the treat seem to enjoy it that much more, but the pastries always seem to cause problems if he ignores them and serves another.

“Here we are, a mini pie a piece,” Dicky greets with a smile as he hands out plates, plastic forks and napkins, “Now, I’m offering forks if you like, but these can certainly be finger foods if you’d prefer.”

Elaine grins at him before picking up the mini pie and taking a bite. The other two judges use their forks for the first bite, quickly making notes on their charts before inhaling the rest—forks abandoned.

Dicky goes home from the fair that day with the first blue ribbon he has earned on his own.

\------

Bitty walked into the Haus kitchen an hour after he had left the muffins with strict instructions not to move and to cool down for their ride back to Providence with Jack only to find the tin empty. He froze, his spine going straight and shoulders stiff as his eyes immediately began running around the kitchen in search of the muffins. He checks the living room and even runs upstairs to dig through Jack’s bag, refusing to answer the questions of the frogs and Hausmates as he dashes about until he sinks into a chair at the kitchen table in exhaustion and stares in confusion at the empty tray.

“Where did y’all get to?” he asks the tray, wondering if the muffins had somehow meandered all the way into Jack’s car in preparation for the trip.

“Oh, hey, Bitty, done with your little freakout?” Holster asks as he and Ransom walk into the kitchen and pull out two cans of Natty Light each from the fridge.

“I baked an entire tray of muffins,” Bitty argues, “and now they’re gone!”

“Oh, man, yeah, sorry,” Ransom says as he pops the can, “Holster and I were planning on just one to tide us over until lunch, but they were just so good. I honestly don’t even remember eating most of them.”

“The two of you ate the entire batch?!”

“Well, I mean, brunch was hours ago, brah,” Holster shrugs.

“They were supposed to go home with Jack!” Bitty groans, “They were pre-workout energy boosts.”

“Dude, I can’t help but feel like Jack’s getting preferential treatment here and that is definitely worth a fine,” Ransom points out before the two exit the kitchen leaving an exasperated Bitty in their wake.

“Oh Lord,” he mumbles to himself as his gaze was drawn once more to the tray picked clean, “I’m gonna have to start teaching y’all to defend yourselves.”


End file.
